“You have to give the people what they want,” says Tamearra Dyson, chef owner of Oakland’s Souley Vegan.

It’s what made the single mom open a brick and mortar restaurant, from her farmer’s market stand almost five years ago, and now she wants to expand her grab and go line, to meet customer demand.

One might think it was spending ten years as an endoscopy technician at Marin General Hospital that made Dyson a vegan.

“It was a phenomenal experience, seeing what happens first-hand in the gastrointestinal tract,” she said.

Actually, her veganism goes back to when she was 17. The Berkeley native was eating a piece of chicken and “all of a sudden it just hit me that I was eating meat off a bone. It grossed me out all of a sudden.”

Much later, she learned about how animals are treated on factory farms. “It’s disgusting and heartbreaking,” she said.